Stick around any scene long enough and after a while everyone's been in a band with everyone else. Although the ingredients for the stew that is the New Alibis are former or current members of other notable Boston punk outfits (Lost City Angels, Far from Finished, the Marvels), this by itself does not make them a supergroup.

Also, supergroups usually suck, and the New Alibis do not. A fuck-ton of bands have stumbled into cliché by preserving the traditional mantra of Boston punk: "We're hard-working-class dudes, but sometimes we cry into our whiskey, the Clash rule, etc." The New Alibis avoid that pitfall on this EP, despite indicating that they too have wept into their booze once or twice, and that they really like the Clash. The difference is in the details.

Blastoff track "Dragged" glues your balls to the wall, not with a guitar lick but with a bass hook that alternately clobbers and scurries about surf-punkishly. The title track, a sentimental bar ballad, is more Bruce Springsteen than done-to-death Irish folk. The punchy little "Faith in Nothing" illustrates the inherent problem with nihilism: believing in nothing is fun only till it gets boring.

HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS | WELCOME OBLIVION | March 13, 2013 Whereas the monsters and ghosts of NIN songs can scream in your face and rip you to bits with their fangs, Welcome Oblivion tracks like techno-folk haunter "Ice Age" and the doom-pop jaunt "How Long?" make uncredited cameo appearances in your nightmares until you go insane and eat your own hands.

JOHNNY MARR | THE MESSENGER | February 25, 2013 Going solo is rarely a good decision. For every exception to the rule of who flourishes after unburdening themselves of the half-talents that have been holding them back — Justin Timberlake, for one — there are dozens of embarrassing Dee Dee Ramone rap albums that exist because Joey and Johnny Ramone weren't around to kibosh a terrible idea.

WHAT'S F'N NEXT? BUKE AND GASE | January 29, 2013 Almost every person I've told about Buke and Gase assumes that they'll hate this band, which isn't their fault.

BLEEDING RAINBOW | YEAH RIGHT | January 23, 2013 The only defect of the sort-of-but-not-really debut from Bleeding Rainbow (no longer called Reading Rainbow, possibly due to litigious ire festering under LeVar Burton's genial television persona) is that the Philly foursome merely hop off the launching point forged by Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and a handful of others from the oft-exalted grunge era.